One of the first female adult movie star (alongside Linda Lovelace and Georgina Spelvin), Marilyn Chambers remained a friendly invidivual on the convention circuit. Of course, she battled her own demons at some point, but she was always perceived as a cool individual and innovator for the XXX movie business. Her interracial scenes in the breakthrough film Behind the Green Door remain taboo-breaking. Interestingly, she was one of the first female adult star to perform before the cameras with a completely shaved pubic area.

Oddly, compared to other adult stars, she didn’t make a ton of films, barely more than thirty in all. If Behind the Green Door is still an important milestone, check out Resurrection of Eve and Insatiable, to have your taste of Marilyn at her best. Of course, there’s a couple of more mainstream projects, like David Cronenberg’s Rabid and and Angel of H.E.A.T. that merits attention.

Marilyn was found dead on April 12, 2009, in her home of Santa Clarita, California; the cause of death has not been made public yet. She would’ve turn 57 on April 22.

Isn’t she something? And isn’t this one of the most suggestive photo I ever published on this blog? Aren’t you glad to know me? In my humble opinion, Gianna Lynn is one of the most beautiful adult film star enjoying great popularity these days. Born in the Philippines on December 3, 1984, she moved to California at the age of four. Legend tells that she was working for a mortgage company before changing career for more sexy behavior. Her fetish/BDSM work is something to see… at least, that’s what my dutiful studies tell me. Keep your eyes open because Gianna could be a prime candidate fortunate enough to cross into more mainstream projects soon!

So what’s the deal with this gal? Quentin Tarantino wants her for a Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! remake, Angela Jolie wants some tips from her for a possible new Catwoman movie (?!?!)… what’s up, really? Why a porn actress is being so courted by the mainstream? Is the fact that she’s amazingly beautiful enough? Once again, the pictures tell the story… but let’s look underneath.

Amazingly, we share the same birthday (July 25), as she came into this world as Linda Ann Hopkins, in 1976, from Great Falls, Montana. Her mom is Thai and her dad Jewish American, which resulted in a most successful mix. She was raised in San Francisco, where she was discovered at the sweet age of 13 by a talent scout for the Eileen Ford Modeling Agency, nothing less. She worked as a fulltime teenage model but returned to studies when she reached her eighteenth birthday. Of all things, she got a degree in microbiology.

But you can’t keep a young girl down, so Tera began nude modeling for men’s magazines, which led to soft and hard cores features, with a little side step for bondage and foot fetish projects. She became a Penthouse Pet and was also featured in Playboy. With more interesting financial opportunities on the horizon, Tera took the plunge into the XXX world and became one of its reigning queens.

If you want to follow her career since its first steps, remember that she performed under some aliases, including Tara Patrick, Sadie Jordan, Brooke Thomas, Tera Hopkins or Linda Shapiro!

Andrew Blake’s Aroused is considered her real debut into the harder stuff. Experts were quick to notice her enthusiasm during sex scenes and of course any display of that astonishing 5’9’ body getting all sweaty was enough reason for a rapid claim to fame. She won the 2000 Hot D’Or Best New Starlet, that being an adult film industry award from Europe. Of course, her home country didn’t forget her, as she was awarded many AVN trophies and the like also.

She married actor/musician Evan Seinfeld in 2004 and was thusly ready to forsake her adult movie career, to the chagrin of millions. But she was successful in breaking her contract with Digital Playground to form her own entertainment company, Teravision Inc. Oddly, she now performs sex scenes only with her husband, but doesn’t mind getting nasty with other females actresses. She also opened her own agency, aptly called The Tera Patrick Agency. Her webcast is still popular.

Tera Patrick has now turned 32, an age that can be considered too old for this industry. But she still remains a breath of fresh air for her looks in adult productions and is more and more talked about in the mainstream press. Hollywood personalities seem to adore her. Is a regular part in a big-budget feature so unlikely (or even low-budget, doesn’t matter)? I hope not.

Let’s talk about sex, baby. I remember the great joy I felt when reading wrestler Mick Foley’s first book, Have A Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks. Not only I learned a lot about my favorite sport and one amazing performer, I was also amused by Mick’s teenage infatuation with adult star Kay Parker, star of the classic genre film Taboo. It made me reminisce about my own favorite porn actress, a person that will be our subject for today, not Mick Foley. Yes, Mick himself would probably shudder at the idea of talking at length about both him and pornography. Wait a minute. Isn’t he a friend of Christy Canyon? But I digress…

As early as yesterday, I blabbered about Cult Sirens’s policy of “no nudity, no vulgarity”, which will be respected for this post. That doesn’t mean that I can’t talk about the adult film industry and it surely implies the use of Photoshop to crop many vital body parts. But as you’ll learn, it’s not like I was a dedicated watcher. In fact, the truth is that I learned about porn by simply reading about it. Remember the old joke: “I buy Playboy for the articles”? Well since I was a movie nut, it was with great delight that I used to read X-rated movie reviews, mainly in Hustler magazine, which contained the best ones (at that time illustrated by a flat to an erect penis to know the degree of satisfaction). The history of porn still remains a fascinating topic for me. So from around 1978 to 1988, let’s say, well before the magic of the web, I used to purchase men’s magazines, not straying away from the basic three, namely Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler.

Playboy for me was a bit on the boring and monotonous side, but I was attracted by the female celebrities invited to pose. The first issue that I nervously bought was one with a stunning Farrah Fawcett cover (December 1978 issue). But I still realized that this publication was the classiest one, even when the many blonde Playmates weren’t to my taste; I appreciated Penthouse for the photography and the models, but the printed word material never caught my interest and all its mystique seemed a bit pretentious; as for Hustler, it was the funniest and most provocative to read, with sometimes outrageous pictorials (can’t forget that hermaphrodite person or the three-breasted cutie) and an amazing sense of joy in sharing pure vulgarity. Like I mentioned, I read all the film reviews and began to know everything about most popular adult performers, while enjoying Larry Flint’s hilarious editorials.

I viewed my first real porn film around 1983 or so, a VHS rental of Café Flesh. I aimed high and was not disappointed, as this movie is considered one of the best of all times, and how could I have known that a potential future Siren was in its cast, mainly Michelle Bauer, then known as Pia Snow? But for some reasons, it was more important for me to view spaghetti westerns, low-budget cannibal films or Santo adventures, so that kind of rental remained quite rare. Now at the age of 43, I sincerely admit that if I have seen more than 20 pure hardcore flicks in my life, I would be very surprised indeed. European softcore of the seventies remains more appealing to my tastes, films starring Laura Gemser, Edwige Fenech or Sylvia Kristel, to name but a few favorites. I still love my imagination doing a lot of work, the brain being our most important sexual organ.

Just once in my life, I got the nerve to enter an adult movie theater, sticky floors and all. I didn’t dare go to the bathroom and I was mainly amazed that there was a hot-dog stand inside (this war around 1985-86)! A fat guy of at least 450 pounds was happily snoring away and I was treated to a triple bill of Sean Penn’s Bad Boys, Roger Corman’s Bloody Mama and John Holmes’s Taxi Girls, our main XXX attraction. This theater (the Crystal) was situated in Montreal’s red-light district (St. Laurent/Ste. Catherine) and has been converted as a musical shows venue. This was a close as a 42nd Street grindhouse movie experience that I will ever get, I presume, with guys yelling at the screen in full misogynistic mode and pimps talking to themselves.

Anyway in all this, there was this adult performer that fascinated me and you guessed it, she was Vanessa Del Rio. I have never even seen a single movie starring her, but even not, I could appreciate that she seemed a raunchy and dedicated performer, who had no problem in doing what she did and most of all loving it. She posed for pictorials with calculated abandon, with this twinkle in her eyes that suggested a sincere will to copulate with the viewer. Believe it or not, a good majority of adult stars working before the video boom of the early eighties could actually act, portraying convincingly real characters among the kinky stuff. Miss Del Rio was one of them.

Vanessa was born on March 31, 1952 in Harlem, New York, a daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Puerto Rico with African and Spanish roots. She began work around 1974 in adult films, being active on screen for the next twelve years or so. The AIDS scare in the industry convinced her to retire gradually, but she still can be seen on her own website, pleasantly plump and still horny. Along the way, she won some Best Supporting Actress awards for Dracula Exotica and The Dancers and is a many times Hall of Fame honoree. Last October, a big and outrageously overpriced book about her career and life was published, with the charming title Vanessa del Rio: Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior. I can’t wait to ever get my hands on it, because its luxurious kitsch allure and over the top format goes so well with its immortal subject.

A couple of years back on my last trip to Manhattan, I finally saw a glimpse of Vanessa Del Rio on a movie screen, this one during a visit at the Museum of Sex on 5th Avenue, where it showed some key segments from classic movies. There was beautiful Vanessa in all her glory, taking expert care of Jamie Gillis, if I remember well. This unexpected encounter pleased me to no end.

The only current performer that I feel is on Vanessa’s sexual level of enjoying her job is succulent Ava Devine… even if I’ve never seen an entire film of her, either! What’s wrong with me? Like Vanessa, the old enthusiasm shines through when Ava decides to take things well in hands… hum, wasn’t I supposed to keep things vulgar-friendly around here?

Now I’m outta here. Make your own research on the subject, I can’t be held responsible! I hope Vanessa won’t get after me because I appropriated some of her pictures… but then again, would I really mind being “get”?